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The Judaization of Jerusalem refers to the process by which Israel has allegedly sought to transform the physical and demographic landscape of Jerusalem to correspond with the Zionist vision of a united and fundamentally Jewish Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty. After the occupation of East Jerusalem in 1967, the Judaization of Jerusalem became Israeli government policy under the rule of the Labour Party.

Overview
Today, Palestinian Jerusalemites in East Jerusalem number some 250,000, comprising 30% of the total population of Jerusalem. Since the 1967 war and Israel's annexation of East Jerusalem, Israeli actions seeking to change the legal status of occupied East Jerusalem in violation of international law have been condemned by the international community. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) writes that, "Israeli and Palestinian organisations have criticised Israeli policies that have sought to judaise East Jerusalem, expand the municipality of Jerusalem, and maintain a Jewish majority in Jerusalem at the expense of the Palestinian community, in violation of international humanitarian law and human rights law (UNCHR, 12 July 1995; ICAHD, March 2007; B'tselem, July 2006)." According to Valerie Zink, while much was accomplished towards the Judaization of Jerusalem with the expulsion of Arab residents in 1948 and 1967, the process has also relied in "peacetime" on "the strategic extension of Jerusalem's municipal boundaries, bureaucratic and legal restrictions on Palestinian land use, disenfranchisement of Jerusalem residents, the expansion of settlements in 'Greater Jerusalem', and the construction of the separation wall." Jeremy Salt writes that the attempts to Judaize Jerusalem, "to obliterate its Palestinian identity" and thicken 'Greater Jerusalem' to encompass much of the West Bank, have continued under successive Israeli governments, with Manuel Hassassian writing in 2002 that such efforts continued during the Oslo peace process.

Cheryl Rubenberg writes that since 1967, Israel has employed processes of "Judaization and Israelization so as to transform Israel into a Jewish metropolis," simultaneously pursuing "a program of de-Arabization" so as to facilitate "its objective of permanent, unified, sovereign control over the city." These policies, which aim to change Jerusalem demographically, socially, culturally and politically, are said by Rubenberg to have intensified after the initiation of the Oslo process in 1993. Rubenberg cites the efforts of fundamentalist Jewish groups who enjoyed government backing in attempts to take over Palestinian homes in the Muslim and Christian Quarters of the Old City between 1993 and 2000 as an example of this process. She also cites settlement construction, and in particular the construction of bypass roads that connect Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem with those in the West Bank so as to create a newly expanded Jerusalem metropolis integrally linked with Israel proper.

Oren Yiftachel characterizes "Judaization" as a state strategy that is implemented state-wide, while noting that Judaization in Jerusalem entailed the incorporation of 170 square kilometers of surrounding land into the city after 1967, and the construction of 8 settlements in East Jerusalem housing a total of 206,000 Jewish settlers by 2001. In 1981, the Supreme Court of Israel ruled that non-Jews could not buy property in the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem so as to "preserve the homogeneity" of the Jewish Quarter. On the other hand, there are no laws prohibiting Jews from buying property or living in Arab East Jerusalem.

Jeff Halper, an anthropologist and director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), describes the Judaization of the city as one of the effects of settlement growth and house demolitions in East Jerusalem, describing such Judaization as aimed at "eliminat[ing] the idea that there is an East Jerusalem, to create one unified, Jewish Jerusalem." In March 2009, defending its planned demolitions against Palestinian houses in the Bustan area of Silwan that would leave 1,500 people homeless, Jerusalem authorities said the houses were built illegally, without zoning and construction permits. Palestinians and human rights organisations countered that "Israel makes it almost impossible for Palestinians to get the requisite permits, as a part of the policy to Judaise the eastern part of the city."

Another major aspect of Israel's effort to Judaize Jerusalem was to replace the Arabic names of streets, quarters and historical sites with Hebrew names. The Jordanian newspaper, al-Ra'i, published a list of such names and accused the Israeli government of changing the Arab names systematically to erase Arab heritage in Jerusalem and prevent the reassertion of Arab sovereignty over the city. The newspaper also claimed the new names had nothing to do with the old names and sometimes attributed a Jewish patrimony when in fact there was no such relation. One example it cited was the site named Solomon's Stables by the Israeli government, which the newspaper claimed was not built in Solomon's time, but at the time of the Roman emperor Hadrian.

Support
According to Nur Masalha, the International Christian Embassy in Jersualem (ICEJ), established in 1980 in the former home of Edward Said, supports "exclusive Israeli sovereignty over the city and the Judaisation of Arab East Jerusalem."

The Elad Association promotes the Judaization of East Jerusalem. Operating in the city for some 20 years to acquire properties belonging to Palestinians in Kfar Silwan, Palestinians say it has "taken over" substantial sections of the village. Elad also funds the digs being conducted near the Temple Mount. In 2008, Haaretz reported that at least 100 skeletons dating to the Islamic era (c. 8th-9th centuries AD) found a few hundred meters from Al-Aqsa mosque were removed and packed into crates before they could be examined by archaeological experts. The excavations are described in Arab media in the context of Israeli efforts to Judaise Jerusalem.

Criticism
In a 2008 report, John Dugard, independent investigator for the United Nations Human Rights Council, cites the Judaization of Jerusalem among many examples of Israeli policies "of colonialism, apartheid or occupation", that create a context in which Palestinian terrorism is "an inevitable consequence". Dugard was heavily criticized for "his inability to use objectivity in his assessment", by Itzhak Levanon, Israel's ambassador to Geneva.

In a joint communiqué issued by King Abdullah of Jordan and King Mohammed VI of Morocco in March 2009, both leaders stressed their determination "to continue defending Jerusalem and to protect it from attempts to Judaise the city and erase its Arab and Islamic identity."